Death By Advertising

The day she died, an ad was run. And you saw it, everyone did. Because it was a perfectly composed ad, with a perfectly chosen photo. Perfect clickbait headline. Not a word out of place. And it had a 30% click-through rate. For the mortuary. That service was the most highly-attended event the mortuary had ever held. And pre-sales of burial plots and cremations spiked. All bought by impulse. Yet the mortuary didn't run that ad. The deceased did. It has come from her ad account, placed the day her body was delivered. No one knew that. Until the I showed up in the agency's office a day after the funeral service... Excerpt: Wednesday. Another grimy, gritty, overcast day in the Big Apple. Tess, her partner, inherited the rest of the ad agency. That had been set up when they formed the company. Judy was the creative end, while Tess kept it running along. Tess thought it odd when when Judy didn't show up on Monday and didn't call over the weekend. But it was a real shock to find out she had died on Friday, been cremated over the weekend and was buried on Tuesday. All thoughts to distract her from the Pine Sol scented elevator with the faux wood paneling as she rode the it once again to their 23rd floor office suite. And again she missed her Midwest college town with the Victorian-styled two-story they used to rent for cheap. Clean air, parked out back. No constant street noise. No closed elevators with Muzak and filtered air pumped in. She could see from her desk through the glass walls into Judy's office. The work had arrived as usual, piles of ad copy, printouts of the newsprint runs and magazine inserts. All making a small pile on her desk. Like every work day. Just as Tess expected Judy to walk in with some wild story of bedding some young college stud and completely losing track of time, Those days were over now. Tess sighed and felt some real grief rising. But shook it off with a shrug. Then sat down to make sense of all their projects. Since Judy's phone was ringing constantly and unanswered, the calls started getting routed to Tess. As the details were in her partner's computer, Tess had to go into Judy's office to get the data. It was then she saw the ad. A full page newspaper treatment, centered on the blotter. Her funeral services ad. Tessa recognized the stock cottage and could name the typefaces, as well as the wipes and fades they used. Still, she dabbed the tears away to keep from going into full blubber mode. Afterward people lined up to sign for the services of the mortuary, even though they weren't running any special offer. In fact, they had to bring all their help out to take the names and numbers of the applicants. Everyone wanted one of the coupons inside the flier for additional savings on their full installment when paid in full. Tessa had noted all this, with her eye for details. That's what made she and Judy work well together. Judy was the idea gal, and Tessa was the get-er-done half. Judy was a whiz with words and pictures. Tessa knew how to get them onto pages, into print, radio, TV, and web. It was Tessa who chose the markets, and saw the follow-through. Tessa crunched the numbers, and later would hire the firms to track all the variables for them. Judy created the ads, Tessa made them happen - at a hefty profit. When there was a one-off, it would often run without her approval, except when it was a big one-off. Like the full page ad for her funeral service. That's why Judy would got the proof. On her desk. Center of her desk blotter. The day of her own funeral. Get Your Copy Now.